Aggressive response to Palos Verdes Peninsula fire saves homes [Updated]

[Updated at 7:54 p.m.: A fire on the Palos Verdes Peninsula this afternoon briefly threatened homes, but an aggressive response from firefighters quickly brought the 3-acre blaze under control.

It occurred just after 5 p.m. near Chadwick School near the corner of Crenshaw Boulevard and Palos Verdes Drive North when a car caught fire, said Los Angeles County Fire Department Capt. Michael Brown.

The blaze quickly spread to the surrounding brush. About six homes were evacuated, but firefighters had the blaze under control by 6:10 p.m.]

Helicopter footage on KABC-TV Channel 7 showed firefighters pouring water on the fire in the backyard of upscale homes overlooking a canyon. Super Scooper planes were on scene within half an hour and made several drops over the fire.

Last week, a much larger fire broke out on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, causing evacuations and damaging a few structures. 

— Jeff Gottlieb

Photo: California Highway Patrol Officer M. Mezger walks around a car that lost control and caused a 3-acre fire Thursday on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Two occupants were taken to a local hospital.

Credit: Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[DaveV]

There's got to be a spark running around LA, that's too much of a coincidence...

[BYUN, DANIEL]

whew. Good thing that no house has burned. Go! Firefighters!

[Rob K]

HOW THE HECK DOES A LEXUS IS loose control? If the fire was ALREADY burning and the driver panicked, I could see it, but I drive an IS350 and the car would NOT loose control on a road like the one in the background unless the driver was on drugs or intoxicated, fell asleep at the wheel, etc. These cars have built in Vehicle Dynamics Control too which prevent the car from going into a tailspin. This totally looks like either a vehicle MALFUNCTION, or a driver who was definitely not with it.

Unfortunately, due to all the other coverage on the recent fires, we will probably never hear what happened to this car and the driver.

[Martin Byhower]

Glad the fire is out, but I wonder if it was absolutely necessary to use seawater to put it out? It is widely stated that seawater renders the land unrecoverable by vegetation, which can lead to serious erosion on the cliffs below those folks' yards if and when we get rain!

[Marshall]

Rob - That section of Crenshaw where the car crashed is a winding hill, wich many people drive down at high speed. It's had many dramatic crashes over the years, and I can totally imagine someone running themselves off road if they weren't paying attention (using a phone, texting, etc...) or were driving too fast.

We could see the smoke from the fire over at my office in San Pedro, but there wasn't any news on it at the time, so we couldn't figure out what had happened. A thin trail of brown smoke was heading out over Torrance.

[Datchelle Clajeng]

You spelled "lose" wrong or rather, you misused the word "loose". Hi Mr. Byhower!! How are the new 7th graders?? I completely agree with you on the saltwater issue; however, we will try to restore the burnt out area with Coastal Bluff plants because they are able to live in saltier soil than most and then later we can add more native plants which will hopefully bring back the native animal species! Yay! I think that more people should plant native plants in their yard because it would save fresh water so we can put out fires with it instead of using salt water. But the native plants were supposed to burn anyway (every certain amount of years) so I do not think this fire was as bad as it seems.

Go firefighters~!